Tomorrow Today
22.10.12 | 00:30 - 01:00 UTC

DW’s science program Tomorrow Today focuses on current topics in research, and is aimed at anyone who is interested in ongoing projects in Germany and Europe. Our reports use terms and concepts that are easily understood, portrayed in interesting ways, and address the core issues at stake.

Brilliant Minds - molecular biologist Ulf Andersson Ørom

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Pharmaceutical products, pesticides – many harmful substances pollute drinking water, and not only in Germany. Sewage treatment plants are ineffectual against them. Researchers are working on a solution: environmentally friendly chemicals that decompose on their own.

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Drinking Water - biodegradable medicines could help health and the environment

Germany’s drinking water is not as clean as it looks. Treatment plants are unable to remove many biologically active substances such as medications and pesticides, which persist in the water supply, with possible long-term effects on human health. That is why researchers in Lüneburg are proposing a new concept involving biodegradable medicines.

They have already developed an anticancer drug that breaks down in wastewater. In the pipeline are chemicals for use by textile manufacturers. The hope is that pharmaceutical and chemical companies will join in the environment-friendly project.

Anne O'Donnell: Instead of trying to build bigger, better sewage treatment plants, researcher are looking at limiting what they are putting in the water, the toxic substances. What do you think of that approach?

Dietrich Borchardt: I think that approach is necessary and innovative. It is necessary because we had to learn that these substances pass sewage treatment plants. They cannot be removed completely. And there are also other sources, for example, some of these substances are also used in agriculture and there they are released into the environment without passing through a wastewater treatment plant, via soils and groundwater. And therefore we need these approaches.

How do you avoid putting toxins in the system?

Avoiding the contamination with the substances means different things. It is the amount of substances that are applied - and then it is the tracking of these substances in the environment with monitoring systems.

Like for example what northern German scientists are doing at the moment. They are looking at creating cancer drugs that are going to be biodegradable and aren´t going to load up our water systems with chemicals so much. Do you see in the future any other chemicals or any other drugs that might go in this direction as well?

Yes, this approach has to be applied for substances that are used in large amounts; these are for example pesticides, hormones and other pharmaceutical substances which are especially effective in the aquatic environments. For those substance groups these approaches are necessary.

It is interesting that the build-up of trace substances in the water like for example hormones, namely estrogen from the pill that women take. An experiment shows an increase in the feminization of fish stocks. What is that then doing to humans if it is doing this to fish?

We have to understand these reactions of an ecosystem, with the fish stocks, as an early warning signal, because when an ecosystem reacts in an adverse way then there is an effect on the environment. And the effect is before it comes back to us humans, because we can consider our drinking water - especially in Germany - as safe, but we cannot be sure in the long run.

But essentially it builds up all the time. If we cannot ever fully eliminate hormones from the water, isn't that really in the long term something that might be very dangerous for us?

It is dangerous in these parts of the environment where these substances accumulate. Therefore we have to link approaches like this with a meaningful environmental monitoring to understand: where do we find the substances? do they accumulate or not? or are they degraded in the environment and are we safely below threshold levels that we have to consider as environmental quality standards? And we have to advance them in the same way.

Interview by Anne O'Donnell

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The Super Raspberry - health straight from the bush

European scientists are working on improving the raspberry. In addition to lots of vitamins and minerals, these fruits contain polyphenols, which are bioactive substances that may benefit human health. Researchers have discovered that the presence of certain fungi in the ground can cause levels of polyphenols in the berries to rise.

In one sunny region in Switzerland, the scientists are investigating ways of growing super-raspberries using the fungi.

Brilliant Minds - molecular biologist Ulf Andersson Ørom

Ulf Andersson Ørom pursues his research in Berlin at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics. The 33-year-old Dane heads a team there looking at genes that are key to development. At home, Ørom is involved in the topic at a practical level as well: his first child was born just a few weeks ago.

Tomorrow Today’s ‘Brilliant Minds’ series presents young researchers from all over the world who have chosen to live and work in Germany.

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Search for Resources - the world’s oldest gold mine

A German-Georgian team of mining archeologists has discovered a 5,000 year old gold mine not far from the Georgian capital Tbilisi. They believe it may be the oldest one in the world. The excavations show that the technology of the time was at a surprisingly high level.

The gold was extracted from the rock 25 meters underground with a host of stone tools and sophisticated techniques - thousands of years before the invention of dynamite!